The see-saw revolution

When I started learning to drive a car, I found a good driving instructor, who took me around our block for half an hour everyday in his battered Maruthi. While he was a good instructor by Indian standards, what he did not know and could not teach was how to parallel park. So I went home and Googled ‘parallel parking’ which led me to many YouTube videos showing me different styles of parallel parking.
Three months earlier when I had my first baby, I wanted to find out what was the best way to change his diaper without getting all messy. This time, I instinctively went to YouTube and found hundreds of videos that show me how to change a diaper. And when I wanted to write an article about net neutrality, I again went to YouTube, where I found videos explaining the principle of net neutrality and hundreds of personal video blogs of laymen expressing their views about the contentious topic. Though, I never gave it a second thought, when I was told that YouTube is the second biggest search engine, it gave me a pause and after a little poking around the web, it dawned on me that it is right and people like me who are going to the video sharing site to learn things like changing diapers, making iPhone apps, cooking chicken Biryani, checking game play in Call of Duty are pushing YouTube’s status to being the second largest search engine in the world.
YouTube, the video-sharing site started in 2005 above a pizzeria by three former PayPal workers has become an integral part of online lives and has become the go-to site for online search. Though it can be used for only video searches within five years of inception it has reached the point where for every 11 searches on the internet, 8 are done on Google’s engines, and 3 are done on YouTube’s. This leaves Yahoo and Microsoft far behind YouTube. Google keeps mum about YouTube’s status as the second largest search engine but is happy with YouTube’s meteoric rise, because it bought YouTube in 2006, and because YouTube is one of the main reasons that Google as a whole, has passed 10 billions searches per month. Ask the modest co-founder of YouTube Chad Hurley and he would only say “I just wanted to create something that I would use and others would find useful too”.
In India, this is not much more different. According to comScore, the online marketing survey agency, Google sites accounts for around 81% of searches done in India and around 30% of those searches come from YouTube. From a survey done in January 2011,comScore also found out that 7 out of 10 Indian web users watch online video in a month. With 30 million Indians watching online video, mostly on YouTube, that is 72% of Indians who come online every month. While this is still less than the 85% viewing in countries like USA, industry watchers predict that exponential growth of broadband will push for more online video viewing and consequently will grow YouTube as a major search engine the world over and particularly in markets like India and Brazil which have tremendous growth opportunities. Joe Nguyen of comScore says “online video viewing is quickly becoming a central activity for Internet users in India...as broadband penetration continues to increase, we expect to see online video continue to grow”. And needless to say the growth is being led by YouTube.
Ask Kalyan, the 36 year old engineer about what he goes to YouTube for and he says cricket matches. Ask Sphoorthy, the 21 year old medicine student and she says movie trailers. Ask Shyam, the 58 year old activist and he says video blogs. For the 10 year old Rani it is finding solutions to her maths problems. For an IT developer like Jai it is about finding online Java tutorials.
Exactly this divergence of being all things to all the people is what is pushing YouTube to be what TV has always aspired to be. YouTube is an education tool, a blogging tool, an encyclopedia, and more than anything, an entertainment tool as evidenced by the meteoric rise of YouTube starts like Justin Bieber. What radio was to our grandfather’s generation, and TV was to our father’s, YouTube is to our generation.

The drift of twitter

When a massive tsunami was ravaging Japan last week, the third most popular twitter trend was Godzilla. It was trending because people,despite the huge tragedy, were making jokes about a Godzilla coming out of the Fukushima nuclear plant if there was a nuclear disaster. For a topic to trend on twitter, millions of its users have to use that hash-tag. On this particular instance they were divided between a majority who were making fun of the disaster and a minority who were condemning the jokes.
Since its inception in 2006, the microblogging site has achieved quite a lot. For one, it single handedly killed blogging as we knew it. People are no longer writing long passages about their opinions but are posting their thoughts in 140 characters. It grew into a global phenomenon after Facebook and at last count has 190 million users, half of them American and about 1% Indian. It is credited with toppling dictators, finding jobs, crowd sourcing, writing books,and at times like when Godzilla is trending , making you lose faith in humanity.
A 2009 survey by a market-research firm found that 40% of traffic on twitter is “pointless babble”. While I doubt this may have decreased over the period since the study, twitter has become more popular and is certainly spewing more junk than ever before. Charlie Sheen is a case in point. The highest paid TV star in America is obviously mentally sick and is in need of psychiatric help. He is addicted and lost his million dollar job due to his public antics. But within weeks of joining twitter he has amassed a following of two and half million users who were clearly laughing at his “tiger blood” tweets. A man who should have been sympathized with and who should have been sent to a rehab and a psychiatrist was enjoying enormous fame and was thinking all was good because of his followers who had no empathy for him and were only laughing at him.
What old timers call as lowering of standards, in education, and in ethics around the world combined with a very bad celebrity culture is leading this twitter revolution with trending topics like tiger blood and Godzilla. What is more alarming is what New York Times editor Bill Keller calls the "the American Idol-ization of news". When the editor of one of the most respected papers on the earth says "once-serious news outlets give pride of place not to stories they think important but to stories that are 'trending' on Twitter", it is time to take note.
This is much more evident and like everything else, much more chaotic and rabble rousing in India. Five years after its conception, the government and most of the political parties do not understand twitter. And if you take some time out to check various Indian twitter accounts randomly, you will realize one thing. Most of them are people who have never tweeted but are just following celebrities from Amitabh to Barkha Dutt, people (called trolls) who use twitter to spew venom at a caste,religion, person or region and who use it to abuse the so-called celebrities. Twitter would have gotten Binayak Sen out of jail in Egypt.
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The race to be evil

In last Sunday’s I. Witness, Edward Wasserman wrote that Google is turning into evil personified in the digital age despite its “Don’t do evil” philosophy. Quite ironically, on the same day, writing in The Observer, John Naughton says Apple is the real evil in his article titled “Forget Google-It’s Apple that is turning into the evil empire”. Though these two seem contradictory, both of them have strong arguments supporting their views. Since their articles appeared in print, some new developments have again tilted the scales in this “Evil than thou” battle of corporations.

Firstly Google. Google has been giving the creeps to any right-minded person for years now. As Mr. Wasserman mentioned, while the idea that Google is evil comes from its manipulation of its search results, there could be much more serious issues with the way Google operates that could turn it into the Skynet of the future. Some intentional and un-intentional actions of Google in the last two weeks are giving creeps to bloggers around the world.

On February 27, Google accidentally reset Gmail accounts causing as many as 150,000 people to lose access to their inboxes. This raises two serious issues. How safe is our data that we are allowing companies like Google to save for us on the cloud? What if in twenty years, we moved to the cloud completely (as is already happening with increasing use of flash drives instead of good old hard disks), but one freak accident deleted all our photos, mails, music, documents, in-fact entire digital lives.

In this case, Google actually backed up the e-mails of all those 150,000 users and was able to restore access. This backing up, though saved the day, raises the second most serious question about how corporations have more control over our data than we have. This kind of backing up of data could prove fatal if Google starts co-operating with evil governments against whistle-blowers like WikiLeaks.

As if this wasn't scary, it was reported last week that there were 58 malicious apps on the Android Market place which 260,000 Android users inadvertently downloaded. These apps were basically trying to steal your information. While this in itself should be scary, what Google did to remedy this was even scarier. It used a remote Kill switch to delete these apps even without the user’s permission. So Google used a backdoor of itself to close some other backdoors. With Google saying there are more than 300,000 android activations a day, this Google backdoor puts an alarming amount of information in one corporation’s hands which is saying “Don’t do evil”. But the question is do we know if Google is really the saint that it is pretending to be. And precisely this makes Google a front runner in the evil corporation competition.

Before we finish with Google, we should remember two quotes by its former CEO Eric Schmidt. “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” That is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 and should scare any right minded person.

Secondly, he also said, “I ACTUALLY think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

The newest entrant into this evil corporation race is Apple. We all love Apple. Apple sells us a product. And sells us an eco-system with it. It sells the music, magazines,books, apps that go with the product. And it gets 30% of whatever we spend. What this means is its market capitalization is $331bn and is the second most valuable company in the world. It can control stocks of SSDs or touch screen panels.

When we buy an Apple product,we either play by Apple’s rules, and go through its iTunes, or we don’t and end up with a very expensive paper-weight(Not talking about the small number of tech-savvy jail-breakers). We can buy a MacBook(it now has an App store), an iPhone,an iPod or an iPad, but we still have to live in Apple’s walled garden. We can eat all the fruit we want, but after paying for it and after the fruit has been approved by Mr.Jobs. Whatever people criticize it for, Apple will play by its rules and will never play by users rules. Use or non-use of Adobe’s Flash is a big example. However it is criticized, it says it won’t provide you with Flash because IT says it is not good for the users. Like an evil government or an evil corporation it decides what is good for us and what is not.

And again like Google, Apple has a kill switch for all its iOS devices. As if this was not enough, Apple is building a massive $1 Billion data center/ server farm over 225 acres of land in North Carolina. Rumor has it that it is planning to make Mobile-me, it’s cloud service completely free to all its iOS users. Extensive use of SSDs in its latest MacBook Airs and iPads suggests that Apple could be moving towards this cloud based model. Which means all users data will be on Apple’s servers. In another two to three years, Apple would have millions of iOS users with all their information stored on Apple’s massive servers. While this is a common scenario for any cloud computing service as Amazon showed, when it closed Wiki Leaks down, the Apple scenario is much more scary because millions of people use Apple products. Because they are mostly people who are not tech savvy, who don’t know how to secure their information, and because they are people who are attracted to the Apple garden because of its attractive UI and great design. And they could all be putting their most intimate and most important information in a corporation’s hands they know nothing about.

As a comedian once said, “If machines take over the world one day and kill all the humans , they will be shiny Apple gadgets that we have invited into our homes”. May be we can apply this to Google gadgets too, though they are not shiny and not always well designed. Only time will tell which will be proved as the evilest of all. That is unless Michael Bay decides to show us, but by blowing up the whole planet.

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Top 5 Movies of 2009

It is that time of the year. I know my blog has not been around this time last year, but every tradition needs to start sometime right. So, here go my top 5 movies of 2009.

1. Star Trek

Without a doubt, the best movie of 2009. What a re-imagining by Abrams. A stunner. Reminds people

why they love Star Trek in the first place. I can't wait for the sequel.

2.Up

The 5 minute love story bit alone makes this a classic, in 3D

3.Hurt Locker

Showed us what a war movie should be,and kept us on the edges of our seats.

4. Avatar

Even if the story was a bit of a let down, the technique makes it a game changer.

5.District 9

What an year for Science fiction. This sci-fi marvel is not just for geeks, but also packs some great social satire.

London to Constantinople-The Paris to Budapest leg

From Paris East or Paris Est., if you prefer, I took the overnight train to Munich. I found myself in a compartment with 5 girls, under the stern gaze of the old german coach attendant who is like a babushka from a Russian train. I got almost kicked out of the compartment, when I told the Oriental girls that I thought they are from China(they are from S.Korea and were amused), and the Polish girl that I thought she is from Germany(she was furious to be called a German). I apologised, saying I never met a Korean girl before, and that all Europeans looked the same to me. (is that racist?). Then it was my turn to be furious when the Polish girl said she saw Slumdog Millionaire. I mean what is it with people? I mean can you say I have seen Schindlers List when I meet Germans? Anyway, the german train was efficiently run and was a pleasure. On the French, German border the train stopped in a small station, for about half an hour, and with just two, three people on the platform, it reminded me of why I love train journeys. The solitude and companionship at the same time. The ability to jump off and on, to buy different food from different places, different countries, on different platforms. It is like having a peek into the lives of the people in that small place. We are like guests or intruders into their lives, depending on how you look at it.
Munich was as expected an efficient, no-nonsense German city. Just outside the station, I found a coffee shop around a corner, and sat there watching the locals go about. I particularly loved it when I saw the locals hurrying to their jobs, while I sat drinking my coffee, and eating my german sandwich.
Within no time, I caught the super fast Austrian train from Munich to Budapest. The train was overcrowded like an Indian train, and I was happy that I have a seat actually. Austria, was beautiful, and I had to literally stop myself from joking about Joseph Fritzl with the Austrians on board.Budapest, though was a shock. It was my first glimpse of a former communist Easter European country, and I was astonished by the desolation and squalor. After Munich, I just had some biscuits, and as I came out of Budapest station and walked into a local cafe, I found out to my astonishment that they don't use Euros. They use hungarian forints, and there were no money exchanges anywhere in sight. Behold the hunger of a man who doesn't have any forints. But, quite happily for me, after some searching, I found a KFC around the corner which accepted Visa. So I paid for my meal in thousands of forints, and realised that if I lived in hungary, my monthly food bill will be in the millions(of forints of course). The best part was there was Wi Fi in the restaurant which was not locked, and I logged right in.
The real train travel adventure started from Budapest.........

An area of Darkness

Two years ago, I was in university. I was in despair. My final project which should earn me the degree was not going well. I was in a mind numbing, spirit crushing job at McDonalds, and everything looked bleak from the McD kitchen.My routine involved working from five in the evening till one in the night, at a minimum wage. After that I would go home, which was an hour and half away by bus, with all its stops at traffic signals, at two in the morning. Then I would catch four hours sleep and head to the university. I was at the lowest point in my life. Literarily, there was no one who could satisfy me, and though I grew up from Dan Brown and John Grisham, to Salman Rushdie, my reading life was in shatters, and I had this childish fear that I would never find a book that awed me. Then one day in the university library, I found a book called "An area of Darkness". After reading the first chapter in the library itself, I called sick to work, and went home. I finished the book overnight. That night changed my life for ever. I discovered a great writer called V.S.Naipaul. I discovered India, and myself. That night changed the way I looked at the world. It was like some one replaced my eyes with a different pair.
After that A House for Mr.Biswas, A Bend in the river and the whole Naipaul collection followed.Now, having just finished his biography, I wanted to share some thoughts about India, and about Naipaul's view of India, and how it changed me.
Take this for example, from Naipaul's private letters, written before writing An area of darkness.
When I read these words, it is like Sir Naipaul is speaking to me directly.

"The point that one feels inescapable is the fact of India's poverty;and how deep is one's contempt for those Indians who, finding no difficulty in accepting one standard in India and another outside it, fail to realise this, and are failing to work day and night for the removal of this dreadful insult and humiliation...."

How true!! And to think that these words have been written in 1962 and are more or less are still true in 2009.
Much is made about Sir Naipaul's obsession with shit. Take this excerpt from the same letter.

"I wonder, wonder if the shitting habits of Indians are not the key to all their attitudes. I wonder if the country will not be spiritually and morally regenerated if people were only made to adopt the standards of other nations in this business of shitting;if only they could be made to see that they owe some responsiblity..."

Again, how true. I remember thinking from childhood, of how wrong the shitting business in India is. I amazed now at how much we Indians take shitting along railway tracks, and shitting on the side of roads for granted. How we Indians are never astonished by all these poor slum dwellers shitting wherever they can. I meet Indians every day who protest at the way it has been portrayed in The Slumdog Millionaire. But, how many of them can accept that the reality is much more worse than what is shown in the picture for atleast thirty percent of Indians.
A book written in '62 is much more powerful and much more informative about Indians than all the millions of books written about India and in India. Till then, I never read a book that spoke about things I know, about things I see everyday, and things I should be ashamed of in a language that I understand. It was not about victorian London, or about Ford County, but about Dharavi and about Kashmir. It was like Naipaul held up a mirror to India.
This as he was leaving the country,

"So goodbye to shit and sweepers; goodbye to people who tolerate everything; goodbye to all the refusal to act;goodbye to the absence of dignity; goodbye to the poverty; goodbye to caste and that curious pettiness which permeates that vast country; goodbye to people who, though consulting astrologers have no sense of their destiny as men"

You probably have to be an outsider, and a genius to see that if India has to change, the change has to come from within. It has to start with people. Indian children are taught, and most of the Indians genuinely believe that 'India is the greatest country in the world'. What a shame!! They will probably never realise that it is not, and it can never be precisely because of themselves. Who else but Sir Naipaul can see how low the country is from the garments that people wear.

"Probably it all has to change. Not only must caste go, but all those sloppy Indian garments; all those saris and lungis; all that squatting on the floor to eat, to write, to serve in a shop, to piss. Probably the physical act of standing upright(think of the sweeper prowling about like a dog below your cafe table) might regenerate the people."

Not a day goes by, when I don't think about this sentence. Kudos to the Master.

The Klingon Wikipedia

I can't stop laughing when I read this. Wired magazine has a lovely article about what it calls The Klingon Wikipedia- "the encyclopedia that huge nerds can edit". This is basically about an alternative wikipedia which explains things in simple English as opposed to regular English version.
The writer also imagines what it would be like if there were alternative versions like 'The Limerick Version". I particularly love the sarcastic version. So see for yourselves how it would be to have different versions of wikipedia.

The Regular English version
"Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the 'true grasses,' of the Poaceae (or Gramineae) family, as well as the sedges (Cyperaceae) and the rushes (Juncaceae)."

The Simple English version
"Grass is a type of plant that covers the ground like a green rug. If it gets too cold or dry, it turns brown. There is a family of plants called the 'grass family.' The plants in the grass family are called grasses.

Sullenly Sarcastic Wikipedia
So I'm sure you've never actually seen grass, so you have no idea that it's a plant, right? Like, there's no way you could just look out the freaking window or go to the park or something and see grass. Hey, guess what plant family grasses belong to? The rhododendron family? The weasel family? It couldn't possibly be the grass family, now, could it?

Limerick Wikipedia
There's a family of plants they call grass.
Many grow in a green, leafy mass.
Other types include grain,
And, of course, sugar cane.
It's a breakfast plant none can surpass.

Excessively Neutral Point of View Wikipedia
Grass, according to many people who are scientists, or who are at least defined as scientists by what many people consider the scientific community, is a plant, although there are those who consider the distinction between plants and animals an artificial distinction and would classify them as "living things," or "objects," or "observable ideas." There appear to be up to five or more people, give or take up to four or more, who post to Plant Conspiracy, which most people would consider a message board, who claim to deny that grasses exist, and who say that what we call grass is actually a very unusually shaped species of terrier. Most people would agree that many people think that these people are what would normally be considered nuts.

Digression Wikipedia
Grass is a plant that you grow, or smoke, am I right? I had this roommate in college, he was such a stoner he took botany just to learn about grow lights. Anyhow, there are a bunch of types of grass, like sedges, which I always get mixed up with sledges. Hey, remember that TV show Sledge hammer? That was a killer show. "Trust me, I know what I'm doing!" Right? Heh. I wonder what that guy is doing now. IMDB says he was on Law & Order, but who hasn't been? Has Wil Wheaton been on Law & Order? He totally should be. He'd make an awesome murderer. Did you see the one with Martin Short?

Hand-Drawn Yard Sale Sign Wikipedia
GRASS'S are "IMPORTANT" PLANTS! Their are MANY "MANY" TYPES! INCLUDING RUSH'S & SEDGE'S! & TRUE GRASS'S!!!!!

Even More Simple English Wikipedia
Grass is green. Grass is plant. Grass is grass.

If you want to read the full Wired article you can here.